The Women’s Islamic Initiative in Spirituality and Equality is a program for the American Society of Muslim Advancement. It is a global social network and grassroots social justice movement designed to empower Muslim women, including promoting religious leadership roles for women. Its website posts a list of Islamic women’s organizations. Contact through the website.

The Muslim Women Resource Center provides assistance to women immigrants and refugees, helping them integrate into U.S. society and the job market. It is based in Chicago.

Douglas Pratt is a Professor of Religious Studies in the department of Philosophy, Religious Studies, and Ethics at the University of Waikato, Hamilton, New Zealand. His areas of expertise include Christianity, Islam, Christian-Muslim relations, interreligious dialogue, and religious issues such as pluralism, fundamentalism and extremism.

Eileen Barker is a professor emeritus in the sociology department at the University of London. She studies minority religions, including cults, sects and New Religious Movements, and relevant social conditions.

Read a July 18, 2010, story in the Tulsa World about State Question 755 on Oklahoma’s November 2010 ballot.

At the website of The New Republic, James Downie critiques that view in a Sept. 3, 2010, post.

This Sept. 2, 2010, essay at the website of the Heritage Foundation sounded the alarm about a New Jersey case that author Cully Stimson argued is evidence that “Sharia-loving extremists are determined to establish an Islamic Caliphate around the world, especially in America.”

In September 2010 the Center for Security Policy released this report that called Islamic law “the preeminent totalitarian threat of our time.”

Read an Oct. 12, 2010, column by Reza Aslan at The Daily Beast about the push to ban Shariah.